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Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Documentary: Beginnings (Response 2)

Bill Nichols[1]
defines the documentary tradition as the convergence of four elements in
conjunction with compliance to the expectation of documentary viewers that a
documentary film tell a story about something that actually happened to real
people, within their same diegetic world). The elements that came together to
evolve a tradition of cinematic documents into documentaries were: indexical documentation (or fidelity to
reality), poetic experimentation, narrative storytelling, and rhetorical
oratory.

It’s evident, as illustrated in his text that the narrative
storytelling was first introduced to non-fiction film with little concern about
indexicality by filmmakers like Robert Flaherty, but that the ability and
willingness of audiences to engage with the narrative in his films made it
clear that a narrative structure could be a powerful tool in structuring
non-fiction as well as fiction films.In
his prescient cinematic niche, Flaherty straddled the indefinable chasm between
fiction and documentary, as perhaps was only possible before documentary
conventions became more codified, and audience expectations more rigid.

The move toward including elements beyond indexicality,
along with the development of a reliable fiscal base for documentary production
(pioneered by John Grierson), created an environment where the documentary
tradition could thrive, and multiple practitioners could explore means and
modes of imbuing films with the distinct voice of their makers.

Each of the 6 modes of documentary filmmaking discussed in
Nichols’ chapter describe a way for the filmmaker to use or define their voice,
imbuing the indexical documentation that is inherent in film or video with the
other three elements that render the indexical subjective and constructed:
poetic experimentation, narrative storytelling, and rhetorical oratory.

Nichols’ modes include, first, the Poetic, wherein the
formal elements of filmmaking are used to a heightened sensory effect, which
was possibly the dominant mode in Flaherty’s Louisiana Story – where the plot
was extremely loose and fluid, (and was apparently scraped together by
Flaherty’s exasperated editor during the two years of filming[2])
but the individual shots and juxtapositions were richly laden with meaning and
detail. The Louisiana Story (1948)is
far more poem than story.(And possibly
more story than documentary, as the ties to indexicality are few).But the poetic mode seems to nearly always
surface when filmmakers have chosen documentary subjects they already have an
affinity for.It figures strongly in
affinity-for-sub-culture documentaries like The
Endless Summer(s)(1966,1994,2000) or Dog
Town and Z Boys(2001), or even in Ballerina
(2006) each of which portrays a performance culture with a nostalgic attention
to the nuance of successful technique, primarily through framing, editing, use
of slow-motion, and music.

The second mode is expository – an equivalent to
show-and-tell.This mode tends to lend
an omniscient air to its internal logic, usually through devices like
voice-over narration written with a voice-of-god authoritative tone.Biographical/historical documentaries (Like Salinger (2013)) and science
documentaries (The Human Face (2001))
seem largely to default to expository mode.

The fourth mode (I’ll come back to #3) is Participatory
mode, where the interaction between filmmakers and their subjects becomes an
active part of meaning making in the film.Regret to Inform (1998) is a
film where the premise of the film is the filmmakers experience interacting
with subjects in Vietnam, where her first husband had been killed years earlier
during the war.The film is entirely
dependent on the presence and present interactions of the filmmaker for its
existence.

The third mode seems a little elusive to me.Pegged as “Observational Mode,” it’s premise
is essentially fly-on-the-wall mode.That the camera will somehow manage to be unobtrusive in some space and
observe events that would have transpired even if the camera were absent.Even with increasingly mobile and stealthy
technology, I’m not convinced this mode can exist in a pure form, because the
presence of cameras, and of the people using them changes cognizant
behavior.It seems like observational
mode might only be possible with non-human subjects. But if the “unobtrusive”
nature of the camera in this mode is ignored, it has little to clearly
differentiate it from expository mode besides being slightly less likely to use
voiceover narration.But I have a hard
time placing Land without Bread (1933)
between Observational and Expository modes.It almost felt like the film treated itself like it had managed
observational mode in many instances where a heavy dose of sensationalism and
unapologetic colonialism were informing filmmakers who were so convinced of
what they were going to find among the “inferior” culture of the Hurdes that
they didn’t manage to observe any of the culture on its own terms or with any
measure of objectivity.

The fifth mode is reflexive, calling attention to the
conventions of film production.A fun
example of this is Animals are Beautiful
People (1975) which abuses montage editing and voiceover narration to a
hilariously self-aware effect. But its also used more subtly as early as
Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929).

The sixth mode is performative, which emphasizes the subjectivity
of the filmmaker’s involvement with a subject.My memory of Born into Brothels
(2004) feels somewhat compatible with this mode (while it also possesses clear use of expository and participatory modes) – wherein the filmmaker was regularly
addressing her emotional response to the information, footage, experiences and
relationships she was encountering, as well as intentionally evoking performances (photographs) from her subjects, and where the purpose of sharing her own subjective emotion was to invoke social change. Her relationship with her
featured subjects became an allegory for an entire social problem.

While any definition is problematic, defining the documentary
tradition as the convergence of the 4 elements that essentially bring
indexicality and voice together, allows for a better understanding of 6 (going
on 7) modes of documentary production, and how each of them places different
value on each of those 4 elements.